Barry DiGregorio, a researcher at Buckingham University, said NASA’s Mars Rover found traces of alien lifeforms on Mars but did not investigate them properly.

DiGregorio hit the headlines earlier this year after he said ‘stick-like figures’ Nasa spotted on Mars resembled ‘trace fossils’ from the Ordovician era on Earth, which started about 485 million years ago.

NASA first announced the discovery of the stick figures in a tweet in the first few days of 2018 and said they were probably crystals or mineral deposits.

He thinks NASA's motive for not wanting to announce life having been found on Mars is that he thinks finding extraterrestrial life would CUT NASA's funding?!

Straying off topic, that's like the claim made by climate change deniers that the reason scientists perpetuate the "myth" of climate change is that so they'll keep getting funding to research it. It's like they think there would be literally nothing else for scientists to research if it weren't for climate change. "Oh, looks like the climate isn't changing after all. I guess we're all out of a job."

He thinks NASA's motive for not wanting to announce life having been found on Mars is that he thinks finding extraterrestrial life would CUT NASA's funding?!

Not quite, as far as I can tell:

Quote:

‘To keep its funding going and prevent an Apollo situation from occurring. The American public got tired of paying for these expensive Apollo missions to the moon.

‘If Nasa told the public it found life on Mars in 1976 how many $2.5 billion Rovers do think would be sent?’

He thinks NASA would get so much funding that people would eventually get fed up with giving them all the funding, and then they would stop getting so much funding. NASA would get so tired of winning that they thought it was better not to win at all, or something...

When the University of Buckingham (which is unusual in that it's a private university) is mentioned I always think of Bucks New University, which is in High Wycombe, and pretty small. Bucks New's main claim to fame is still that Noel Fielding from the Mighty Boosh studied there, and met Julian Barratt during a comedy night at the Wycombe Swan. It looks like Buckingham has just beaten them on the comedian front, though.

He thinks NASA would get so much funding that people would eventually get fed up with giving them all the funding, and then they would stop getting so much funding. NASA would get so tired of winning that they thought it was better not to win at all, or something...

And of course, despite the fact that NASA is trying to keep this a secret, they still released the actual photo. Um. Sure.

But the funding thing is the one that got me. "No! If we tell the world about this, they'll give us too much money!"

(I've heard that one Air Force office, commenting on the idea that the military was covering up the existence of aliens, said something to the effect of, "Are you kidding? If there really were flying saucers, all of us majors would be colonels.")